Ashes Of Sakura
by Morithil
Summary: Post-Rainbow Bridge. Subaru has the same dream every night, and voices his love and pain to a man who is no longer there.


DISCLAIMER: I do not own Seishirou or Subaru, they belong to the lucky ladies at CLAMP.

_lyric extracts come from the song Northern Star, by Hole_

Ashes Of Sakura

I had a dream last night.

I dreamt you came to me, wreathed in sakura blossoms, the air around us filled with their satin touch and their heady fragrance. But there was something different. You were on fire. There were flames surrounding us and they came from you. The sakura blossom was wreathed in smoke and in the burning and their beauty we made our funeral pyre. I was in paradise.

_The blinded eyes that see the chaos._

I felt the heat of the flames and in them tasted the fire of your eyes. I knew then that we were mirror images of each other, two eyes looking forward, to blind orbs that saw only the past. Darkness. Even blindness in one eye could not take away from your power over me. Perhaps it made you even more beautiful, one amber eyes glinting while the other lay dormant in grey sleep, the single golden orb's beauty magnified a thousand times over. Looking into your face was like seeing the sun in the clouds. I did not feel cold anymore. Kiss me before dying, Seishirou-san.

_All the angels kneel into the Northern Lights._

Rainbow Bridge was our death. Unlike what certain legends tell, there was no pot of gold at the end of it. Instead I found a man with golden eyes. Once golden, I should say, Seishirou-san. I am the reason for your blindness, just as you are the reason for mine. Your eyes still haunt me, amber jewels that could be magnetic, predatory, suggestive. Kindly, amused. I think of how you'd try to hide it, drawing attention away from that piercing, almost unearthly gaze with wire frames, dark glasses. It may have diverted the attention of others, never mine.__

_Ghosts that haunt you with their sorrow._

How many did you take, offer up to the tree, Sakurazukamori? You, who were the dark, and I, the light, we stood on the same inexorable line all our lives. Yes, the same, though the lives you took were as many as the lives I saved and endeavoured to save. And I could not hate you, could not hate you unless through sheer potency of emotion what I felt surpassed its nature and passed over into hating you. Which never happened. Which will never happen. Everything about you told me to stay away and pulled me closer. Dark onmyouji. Sakurazuka. Assassin. Did everything about me draw you in the same way? I assumed I lost the bet. How could you feel anything, who wiped the blood and sinew off gloved hands and lit cigarettes without blinking at the flicker of the flame in the darkness? I think of seeing you again, the way I did on Rainbow Bridge, and I am sixteen again, green-eyed and naïve, trying to be normal, trying to fit in, trying to take gloves off that could not be removed. What happened to that boy, I sometimes wonder. Perhaps you killed him. You killed everything else.__

_And they paid, I cry and cry for you._

You killed Hokuto. My beloved sister, barely older than me. You called her as much, dared me to have some reaction. We stood facing each other, the distance between us could have been as wide as the ocean and I would still want to cross it, bury my face in your powerful shoulder, let your black clothed arms enclose me, hold me, crush me, anything. I would have borne your long-fingered hands, hands that did not belong to a killer but to a musician, a painter. I would have borne them gripping my throat, ready to crumble my windpipe if it meant being close to you, having you touch me. Is anything more intimate than death by the one you love? You never had the time to show me otherwise. My fevered sleep can only imagine.__

_Can you see the trees, charity and gratitude._

And your monstrous tree. Did my sister go to it, Seishirou-san? Did you send my sister to your tree where many a poor soul was devoured and destroyed, warped beyond recognition? Where did you send her? __

_And I knew, the fire and the ashes of his grace._

Onee-chan, I am forever sorry. I cannot feel anything else for him but what you knew I felt for him, knew before I did. You would scold me now, I have given up on the bold colours you made me wear. White and black and grey. Blue is the closest thing to colour I wear now, even that is muted. On Rainbow Bridge I saw how we complimented each other, his trenchcoat black and mine white. How when we soared into the sky, leaping to one another I could fantasise that it was a means for him to catch me before I fell. How when he emerged the first time, the cold grey mist of the water and the dark night slitting itself open to let him through, I could not believe that anything could be more beautiful. How many times he saved me, Hokuto-chan. Saved my life. His prey. How I wanted him to catch me.__

_And I want you._

Seishirou-san, I look like you now. I am sightless in my right eye. That wish was granted. I lost my stammer years ago. My remaining eye is violet. They call me stoic. Nothing shows on my face but what I wish to show. Only you would call me Subaru-kun and say I was adorable now. One thing I never got was your voice. How you always sounded amused by something, as if there was a permanent joke that you and only you were aware of. Was I the joke, Seishirou-san? Did I amuse you? I can never be you. Even now, when, as is my right, I am the next Sakurazukamori, I can only be myself. Subaru; the thirteenth and possibly the last Head of the Sumeragi clan. And now I have to be both of us, Sakurazukamori and Sumeragi, light and darkness combined. No one will ever comprehend.__

_No loneliness, no misery is worth you._

And the how, the why. Why you died in my arms and not I in yours. You killed everything, Seishirou-san. You disposed of yourself in the same clinical, ruthless and efficient fashion that you did all of those who went to the cherry tree. I could spend the rest of my solitary, yes, because you have left me nothing, Seishirou, not even yourself, my solitary life in grieving for you and it would not bring you back. Only you could kill me. I have become an unwilling immortal, waiting for the inevitable that will take many decades to come. My wish will take a lifetime to be granted. Or have you granted it already? See, you have left me indecision and uncertainty which only shows when I am alone in the empty shell of your apartment, waiting for you to come through the door. Have you killed me already, assassin? Or am I forever your walking wounded, your prey, your killer? I am martyr to my love for you.

_Oh tear his heart out cold as ice it's mine._

And how nothing remains. And in your final words as I held you, closer than I ever dared, blood and torn fabric, your black hair brushing my cheek and your lips at my ear, did you speak the truth? And did it matter, after all. I loved you still. I wanted you still. The rest of the Seals arrived, watched us from above and I was oblivious. I wanted you and only you, and you had left me. No more hunting me, pursuing me from the shadows.__

_And I want you._

In my dream you give me that smile, that razorblade, eagle-sharp smile that reduced me to a trembling, nervous youth again, clinging to you for dear life, for the paradise that you would have shown me all those years. All the smouldering looks and electric caresses. Or was it damnation you offered me, Seishirou-san? I was never able to tell. Your hand curves round my slender neck, and your mouth possesses mine hungrily, completely. I am yours.

_Even though I'm wide awake, I will, and blackest night._

I wake up alone, the scent of sakura and the smell of ashes permeating my room. I have this dream every night, collapse helpless in your arms, give myself to you. I am yours.

_I want you._

And together we burn.__


End file.
